The House Ways and Means Committee chairman was ready to send the panel’s files on former IRS official Lois Lerner to the Justice Department for a possible prosecution — a handover that could have been accomplished with a simple phone call to the attorney general. Instead, Camp put on a show.

Dana Milbank writes about political theater in the nation’s capital. He joined the Post as a political reporter in 2000. View Archive

Republicans said the closed session was required to make the information public, but the panel’s ranking Democrat, Sandy Levin (Mich.), said the debate should be held in the open.

“Mr. Chairman?” he inquired after the plan to go into secret session was announced.

1 of 11

Full Screen

Autoplay

Close

Skip Ad

×

10 myths about Obama (that people actually believe)

View Photos

We’ve all heard them: Misinformation about President Obama has a penchant for spreading like wildfire. The Post’s Swati Sharma attempts to set a few matters straight.

Caption

We’ve all heard them: Misinformation about President Obama has a penchant for spreading like wildfire. The Post’s Swati Sharma attempts to set a few matters straight.

We’ve all heard them: Misinformation about President Obama has a penchant for spreading like wildfire.Dana Milbank offers a few answers for the reasons, as he characterizes it, that the Kenyan born Muslim raised in a madrassa president somehow attracts lies and rumors that are far from the truth. As for the rumors themselves, we have compiled a list that aren't the most outrageous but have a surprising base of believers. Win McNamee/Getty Images

This was true. Levin hadn’t raised his voice at all. Camp, on the other hand, was agitated — for good reason.

The lawmaker, who is retiring at the end of this term, has built a solid reputation over the years, and he recently won plaudits for releasing a thoughtful proposal to overhaul the tax code. Camp was on course to retire with dignity — at least until he allowed his committee room to be turned into a circus tent Wednesday. It was a folly wrapped in a charade and shrouded by farce.

Folly: There was no need to have a formal hearing to convey the information to the Justice Department, which is already investigating the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups.

Charade: The committee made a big show of having its secret hearing, even though it was a foregone conclusion that the members would vote along party lines to release its “secret” information — including the transcript of the secret hearing — to the public.

Farce: Camp said Lerner could be prosecuted for releasing private taxpayer information. Yet in making public its Lerner files, the committee used its authority to do legally the same thing it accused her of doing illegally: releasing confidential taxpayer information. That hadn’t been done in at least 40 years.

Of course, the taxpayers whose information was released — mostly related to Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS group — may not mind, because they have an interest in seeing somebody pay for the IRS’s targeting of a disproportionate number of tea party groups for extra scrutiny.

The IRS scandal didn’t come close to the “culture of corruption” Camp promised or the “targeting of the president’s political enemies” and coverup alleged by Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), whose committee is holding the contempt vote. Instead, the investigations didn’t go beyond Lerner, a civil servant who led the agency’s tax-exempt division. “This was a career employee in the IRS potentially who did all these things,” Camp said after Wednesday’s secret session. “So we have to make sure that the signal goes out that this doesn’t happen again.”

That’s a reasonable sentiment, and one shared by Levin, who on Wednesday said Lerner had been guilty of “clear mismanagement.” Democrats objected not to Camp turning over the committee’s information on Lerner, but to the cloak-and-dagger hearing followed by the wholesale release of tax records.

The AP’s Stephen Ohlemacher asked Camp why he didn’t just “pick up the phone” rather than make private taxpayer files public.

Camp agreed that such a release was unprecedented but said, “This is so important that I think the public has a right to know.” He repeatedly called the matter “important” and “a very serious thing.”

But the chairman’s claims of importance were undermined by his committee’s antics, including its showy secrecy. Reporters, waiting out the two-hour closed session in the hallway, were treated to Krispy Kreme doughnuts by the committee’s staff. But inside the room, other staffers were unplugging the journalists’ cables, just to be sure nobody pierced the veil.

When Camp reconvened the hearing after the secret session, cameramen called out for him to wait as they reassembled their equipment. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) complained. “Are you guys ready?” he moaned.

But Camp waited, which was wise. What good is a farce if it isn’t on film?

Comments our editors find particularly useful or relevant are displayed in Top Comments, as are comments by users with these badges: . Replies to those posts appear here, as well as posts by staff writers.

To pause and restart automatic updates, click "Live" or "Paused". If paused, you'll be notified of the number of additional comments that have come in.

Comments our editors find particularly useful or relevant are displayed in Top Comments, as are comments by users with these badges: . Replies to those posts appear here, as well as posts by staff writers.